Yes, Mark Wahlberg's new film looks like "The Wrestler" and "Rocky's" slow-moving love child, but it does have the potential to bring one of our favorite spectacles back to theaters: buff, shirtless middle-aged men beating on each other.
In "The Fighter," Wahlberg plays a down on his luck, you guessed it, fighter who loses a big match. We imagine he will eventually find love with Amy Adams' beautiful yet tough-as-nails ingénue and learn valuable lessons about life, family, perseverance…and other shit. We don't have any of our middle school gym teacher's motivational posters on hand, so we'll have to look up the rest of the extremely original ideas motivating this film later.
Whatever. We're mostly into this for the shirtless shots of Mark Wahlberg who's looking pretty damn fit, as always. We're also enjoying the shirtless shots of the big, hunky African-American boxer who will probably have very few lines but will beat the shit out of Wahlberg the first time they fight with his superior, brutish African-American strength only to be soundly defeated by Wahlberg once he's learned whatever life lessons he needs to become the ultimate fighter and also maybe win back custody of his daughter? Fucking Hollywood.
We have to say, though, this shot of Amy Adams grabbing some bitch by the face and shoving her to the ground is also pretty choice, and almost makes us want to see this movie. Way to go, red!
· The Fighter Trailer (youtube.com)